Intel Awarded a Patent for an Energy Efficient Bitcoin Mining Process

Intel Awarded a Patent for an Energy Efficient Bitcoin Mining Process

The Intel corporation, headquartered in Santa Clara, California is well known for being a competitive chipset manufacturer. Last Tuesday the company was granted a patent by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) which describes a specialized processing system for mining the SHA256 algorithm. The patent was filed on June 29, 2016, and the concept was invented by three individuals from Hillsboro, Oregon.

Intel’s latest patent claims the corporation has invented a more efficient SHA256 mining (BCH, BTC) process. The mining process is optimized by using SHA256 datapaths. The invention claims to be a more efficient mining processor with hardware accelerators that can narrow overall power consumption compared to today’s application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) machines. The patent’s description is 29 pages long and contains figures which illustrate the processing system. The invention could comprise of various things like a “chipset, or a portion of a chipset.”

“Embodiments of the present disclosure include energy-efficient ASIC-based SHA engines that consume less power for Bitcoin mining operations,” explains the patent.

The Intel patent explains that Bitcoin’s technology “resolves the ‘double spending’ problem,” but further emphasizes that processors today that are mining cryptocurrencies consume enormous amounts of power. Intel says some “clusters of SHA engines” consume more than 200 watts. The invention claims it will take advantage of a myriad of SHA-256 stages and methods of processing hash by utilizing optimized data paths.